This is Australia

Aboriginal Australia has a lousy reputation when it comes to alcohol. This article addresses the issue of alcohol in Aboriginal communities.

They learned how to use it and abuse it from the best in the business – the English, who arrived fresh from the London “gin craze” of the early 1700s and who drank at breakfast, lunch and dinner. By the 1820s, they had built 13 breweries in the Sydney area and by 1850 there were 500 hotels.

But segregation and pub bans for more than a century fostered an indigenous drinking culture unchecked by the niceties of licensed establishments, and drinking grog eventually came to symbolise equality and civil rights.

In fact, it is common practice for councils to use aerial mapping programs to keep track of information they gather. Every time a dog attack is reported, a complaint made, a development application submitted or a bike rack installed, the information goes into the mapping system.

“We can see anything bigger than 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres,” said the City of Sydney’s spatial information co-ordinator, Matthew Dobson, adding that the aerial shots are soon to be updated. “A number of councils have E-View or similar programs. You just couldn’t get by without them.”

The OECD report shows public spending on all levels of education in Australia totalled 4.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2005.

The OECD average is 5 per cent.

The OECD report also shows that the highest wage for Australian teachers is significantly lower than in most other developed nations, despite teachers here working longer hours and having bigger classes.

Hopefully the Labour government might change those statistics someday soon.